Targets are used by marksmen as training aids. Initial firearms training may be performed with traditional bulls-eye targets or paper, plastic or metallic silhouette targets. These targets are useful to train police, soldiers, hunters or other citizens how to aim and shoot. When trying to tactically train police and soldiers who and what to shoot, more sophisticated targets are necessary. In order to train marksmen to differentiate between bad guys and good guys, realistic, three dimensional and variably shaped and dressed targets are very useful. Realistic targets, ones which look like actual human beings, are especially critical in training for real life situations. Police are often faced with the need to differentiate between gun wielding criminals and innocent bystanders in close proximity, as when a bank robber is exiting a bank while bank customers are nearby. Police are also sometimes faced with the need to quickly distinguish between a teenager carrying a pistol and a child carrying a toy gun. Soldiers in modern combat are often faced with fighting situations in which armed enemy soldiers are in close proximity to civilians, and must shoot the enemy soldiers while protecting the civilians. The ability to distinguish between targets and non-combatants is critically important. In a more gruesome scenario, soldiers in the Vietnam war were exposed to grave danger because of their reluctance to shoot women and little children bearing weapons (after having been trained on conventional bulls-eye targets or silhouette targets). In all of these scenarios, training with lifelike targets before the police and soldiers are confronted with the actual real life situation is of great value in ensuring that appropriate target selection can be accomplished under the pressure and confusion of actual criminal or military action.
Targets have been used to simulate real life situations. Styrofoam targets are most common, but these are not very durable and easily fragment after being hit with bullets. Thus they are not re-usable to any great extent. The Styrofoam targets are not deformable or shapable during use, and they must be formed in molds. This limits the number of poses available for simulation purposes, and also requires shipment and storage of mannequins and figures which are large and bulky. Some of these targets may be provided with a balloon suspension system used to signal when the target has been hit. A balloon is inflated inside the chest of the mannequin and suspended from above to hold the mannequin upright. When the chest cavity is struck with a bullet, the balloon bursts and the target falls. To reuse the target, to the extent that it is reusable, the mannequin must be fitted with a new balloon and be re-hung on the range. Thus after each successful hit, a target cannot be re-used without shutting down the range to allow range personnel to rehabilitate the targets. The useful life of these targets is limited by their tendency to crumble or shred under repeated weapons fire, leaving the military and police force with the high cost of frequent replacement.
Other problems are encountered with the mannequin type targets currently in use. Manufacture of the target mannequins involves a high cost of tooling for polymeric targets with injection, blow, spin or other traditional mechanical molding processes. The supply of mannequins, even when dismembered for shipment, involves considerable bulk and storage.
The targets currently in use have unrealistic two dimensional or three dimensional appearance, and permit little variation in positioning, posturing and external visual characteristics. Although the targets sometimes permit the attachment of firearms to the targets, the targets cannot be posed to hold or aim firearms in various positions.
Another technical challenge in target use is determining if the target has been hit. Various layered sheet materials have been proposed which can detect a hit by the changes in the electrical properties of the sheet after the sheet is punctured by a bullet. The sheets have a wire mesh which forms electric circuits which are disrupted by penetration of a bullet through the mesh. Other embodiments use electrically conductive friable (easily crumbled) woven wire screens which indicate a hit when an electric circuit is formed by action of the bullet penetrating a target. The wire mesh used in these target materials is intended to be friable, and there is no indication that the mesh is of sufficient gauge to offer structural support to the target material. In fact, one patent requires that the first screen material be 0.001 to 0.005 inches thick, and that a second wire mesh electrode be 20 mesh flyscreen (window screen).